FIBA ties up NZ TV deal and approves competition cycle funding

Basketball - 21 Nov 2017

Author: Simon Ward

FIBA, the international basketball federation, has announced a new broadcasting deal in New Zealand and committed more than €30 million ($35 million) in funding for national team games ahead of the start of the qualifying competition for the 2019 Basketball World Cup.

Maori Television, the New Zealand free-to-air network, has been awarded exclusive live rights in the market to FIBA competitions featuring the country’s men’s, women’s and junior national teams for the next four years.

The coverage begins with Thursday’s World Cup qualifier between New Zealand and South Korea in Wellington, which will be broadcast live on the Maori Television channel and streamed on maoritelevision.com, starting at 7pm, with commentary available in te reo Maori and English.

In addition
to South Korea, New Zealand will face Hong Kong and China in the first round of
qualifying for the World Cup.

Maori Television’s deal includes the 2019 World Cup, to be hosted by China, the 2018 Women’s World Cup, to be held in Spain, the 2019 Women’s Asia Cup and the 2021 Asia Cup and preceding qualifiers, with all semi-finals and finals to be shown live and free-to-air, regardless of the competing countries.

The
agreement was brokered by FIBA Media, the joint venture set up by FIBA and
Perform, the international sports content and media group, as part of a 17-year media rights agreement in 2016 worth close to €500 million.

The operation has been concluding deals worldwide before the introduction of a new global calendar, which includes windows for international games in November, February, June and September as part of FIBA’s drive to raise the profile of national team basketball.

At a meeting at the FIBA headquarters in Mies, Switzerland on Saturday, the executive committee approved global investment of over €30 million in the first cycle of the new competition system, from 2017 to 2021,

FIBA is meeting the core costs of operations including TV
production, which previously fell to national federations, and providing insurance
for all players.

In addition, federations representing major TV markets will benefit
from a rights redistribution scheme, while others will be entitled to a minimum
contribution as a share of a new solidarity fund.

The executive committee has also approved the principle to allocate prize money to participating teams in the 2019 Basketball World Cup, which will be the first to involve 32 teams, up from 24 in the past, and approved the federation’s budget for 2018 and acknowledged the financial plan for 2019-21.

Meanwhile, FIBA has launched a dedicated Basketball World Cup app, which will enable fans to follow the action in the qualifiers and at the tournament itself on their mobile devices.

The app was developed by Omnigon, a subsidiary of the Infront Sports & Media agency, and is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Earlier this month, FIBA welcomed delegations from the four
candidates bidding to host the 2023 World Cup, namely the joint bid from
Argentina and Uruguay, the three-way bid from Indonesia, Japan and The Philippines,
and the solo bids from Russia and Turkey.

The host or hosts will be decided in a vote of the FIBA Central
Board on 9 December.